Was gone for a wedding and swamped with other work, so I haven't had a ton of time to work on my film, but I did get Zbrush up and running and started working on my wolf. It's been a bit difficult since I haven't used it for about 2 years, but we're getting there. You can see the base below.
I've also been looking at trees! Lots of trees. But specifically the sugar pine tree, which gives the tall, high branch vibe I want for the environment for my film.
I started a rough model for this as you can see above, and I'm working to keep these as low poly as possible so that it will be easy to make variations, as well as UV unwrap and texture. I'll be doing my leaves through the classic transparent planes, but I will be hand painting them so that I can implement them into the style I want. Speaking of style...
I recently played through Firewatch, and I adored the WPA style. I already wanted to go for a very painterly style, but this gave me a really good example for something similar to what I will be going for, especially for shots with distant things like the mountains and further extents of the valley. If I had to put it simply, think Firewatch/WPA mixed with Ghibli films.
The developers of Firewatch, Campo Santo, put out an excellent talk for the 2015 GDC about some of the techniques they used. Things to take from this will be the shapes for the pines and rocks, and the stylistic fog using a color strip texture.
https://youtu.be/SdxQ3HlhTE8
Finally, the last update for today will be welcoming my composer, Aaron Soltis, to the team!
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